TV clashes
Parking mad: Car clipped by train
A car parked with its nose centimetres from a railway line was clipped by a passing train.
The car was parked at a makeshift gravel car park beside a junk yard in Blenheim, when the collision happened on Wednesday night.
The car park was part of a large unfenced back section leased by Blenheim Metal Recyclers for storage.
A staff member, who would not be named, said people had been parking dangerously there for years, as staff members at the nearby supermarket and neighbouring businesses competed for parking.
On a busy day there would be up to 40 vehicles parked there, he estimated.
‘‘They park there because they’re too lazy to park further away. I’ve been so frustrated with it, you almost want someone to have their car wiped out so they’ll learn.
‘‘Our trucks drive in there to do pick-ups and drop-offs, and they’re huge trucks.
‘‘The cars are always blocking the gate.
‘‘We’ve put notes on the cars to say they might get damaged if they don’t leave us enough room.
‘‘If they’re dumb enough to park like that, that’s their problem.’’
TrackSAFE NZ foundation manager Megan Drayton said drivers should think carefully about where they parked their cars, ‘‘particularly where they are doing so in the vicinity of railway tracks’’.
‘‘People and vehicles should always keep a minimum distance of 5 metres from railway tracks to remain safe.’’
Crashes like the one in Blenheim were ‘‘extremely stressful’’ for locomotive engineers, or train drivers, Drayton said.
‘‘When a train is approaching a vehicle on or close to the tracks, it is not always possible for the driver to know whether there are people in the car or not.
‘‘This can cause a lot of anxiety as the locomotive engineer applies the emergency brake to stop the train, and then has to wait for the train to stop.’’
A fully-loaded freight train travelling at full speed could take up to a kilometre to stop after the emergency brake was applied, Drayton said.
A KiwiRail spokesperson said nobody was hurt in the crash but the southbound train was stopped and the driver was ‘‘relieved of his duties, as is normal procedure’’.
The locomotive was not damaged in the incident, she said.
Blenheim police would follow up with the driver, and KiwiRail was conducting its own investigation into the crash.
‘‘However we remind the public that they should not be in the rail corridor, and if parking alongside the corridor, they should be at least 5m from the track,’’ the KiwiRail spokeswoman said.